The monster of suburbia

America's most notorious serial killer terrified a small town for 30 years. Now police have arrested a church-going family man they believe is responsible for 10 murders.
Paul Harris reports from Kansas

The wind blows constantly through Wichita's streets. It is a reminder that the city sits on what was once pristine prairie. When white settlers arrived the eternal howling breeze drove some insane. It was a phenomenon that preyed especially on women and children and was dubbed 'prairie madness'.

For the past 30 years another sort of madness has blown through Wichita. It was a very human insanity but its victims were the same. It was the BTK Strangler, a serial-killing monster who held the city in fear for three decades and took 10 lives.

Now, police believe, that monster has a face. It is that of a mustachioed, balding, middle-aged man. And he has a name. Dennis Rader, 59, a man previously known mostly as the local dog warden. Now Rader sits in a windowless cell charged with killing seven women, two children and one man. If he is BTK, his name will soon rise to the top of America's most notorious killers. Unfortunately that may have been the killer's intention all along.

BTK is a uniquely awful killer in the annals of American crime. His initials stand for bind, torture and kill. His victims were attacked in their own homes and strangled, sometimes as their children watched. Other times the children died too. Most bizarre of all was BTK's courting of the media. He wrote letters and poems to newspapers, taunting and ranting. He brazenly reported his murders to the police. But BTK was meant to be a thing of the past. His spree was thought to have ended in 1979. He was assumed to have died or moved away. Until last March. That was when BTK began writing again and confessing to new crimes. It brought fresh fear to Wichita, and focused the eyes of the world on Kansas.

With Rader in jail, locals hope the terror is now lifted. But the wounds of three decades will take a long time to heal. Standing just yards from Rader's home, Diana Smith thought her near neighbour was just another local figure on a quiet suburban street. 'Anyone round here could have been one of the victims,' she said . 'Anyone at all. I just feel in shock.'

It was a cold winter's day on 15 January 1974, and the sun was shining as Joseph Otero left his house to drive his three eldest children to school. While he was away, BTK struck for the first time. He entered the house, binding and strangling Otero's wife Julie. He did the same to Joseph Junior, who was just nine. At some stage Otero returned, only to meet the same fate. But it was with 11-year-old Josephine that BTK took the most time. She was found in the basement wearing just a sweatshirt and socks. She had been hung from a ceiling pipe.

At first a stunned Wichita did not realise a serial killer was in its midst. Police arrested a man who confessed all. But that prompted an anonymous phone call to a writer on the Wichita Eagle which directed him to a book in a library. A letter was discovered tucked inside. Its contents, revealing details known only to the police, showed they had got the wrong man. BTK was born. The tone of the letter demanded attention. 'I did it by myself and no ones help,' it complained with typically poor grammar.

It was the first of many. They were often misspelt, which detectives suspected was a ruse, and at times boastful. Other times they were self-pitying. 'I can't stop it so the monster goes on and hurts me as well as society,' BTK once complained. He sought publicity incessantly. He even nicknamed himself. 'How many people do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?' he wrote bitterly.

By the time BTK began writing he had already killed again. He butchered Kathryn Bright and tried to kill her brother who had unexpectedly accompanied her home. Shirley Vian was killed on 17 March 1977, as her three children were locked in the bathroom. Nancy Fox followed in December of the same year. This time BTK reported his own crime, dialling 911 from a payphone.

It was a surreal horror. One taunting missive about the Vian killing sent to the Eagle began 'Shirleylocks, Shirleylocks' and BTK was furious when the paper printed it mistakenly as a personal ad. He also slipped up with Anna Williams who was meant to be victim number eight. As Williams enjoyed herself at a square dance, BTK broke into her home and waited. But Williams visited her daughter on the way home. It saved her life. BTK got bored and left. When she returned it was to the scene of what she thought was a burglary. Not that BTK allowed her to keep that comforting illusion for long.

He wrote her a bone-chilling poem titled 'Oh, Anna, why didn't you appear?'. 'Twas a perfect plan of deviant pleasure so bold on that spring nite,' BTK opined. 'I lay with sweet enrapture garments across most private thoughts,' he continued. 'Alone again I trod... and wonder why for number eight was not. Oh, Anna, why didn't you appear?'

That was in April 1980, and then for some reason the game stopped. BTK had come and gone. His letters ceased. The killings - apparently - had ended. The investigation shifted to the backburner. In the Eighties a renewed effort to go over old ground brought no real progress. BTK became a bad dream borne on the howling prairie wind.

Until last year. Police had assumed BTK was dead, in jail or had moved. They were wrong. A mysterious letter appeared at the Eagle. Inside was a driving licence and three polaroid photographs of a woman lying prone on the floor. Her name was Vicki Wegerle. She had been killed, strangled in her own home, in 1986. Not only was BTK back, he had never stopped killing.

The impact on Wichita was electric. The public rushed to buy personal protection devices. The police and the FBI assembled a huge taskforce. Again the communications became regular, either with the Eagle, or to TV stations or by messages dropped off at the side of a road.

Speculation was rife about why BTK had come forward. 'He wanted to start the game again and he knew the stakes were high,' said Eric Hickey, a criminal psychologist at California State University.

Many believed BTK wanted to be caught; perhaps he resented still not being famous for what he considered his life's greatest achievement. Others noticed that the letters began soon after the Eagle published a 30-year anniversary piece on the Otero killings. Gradually police used the letters to build a picture of their target, mindful that BTK could be feeding them false clues. He claimed to be born in 1939, to have had a father who had died young and who had always lived near railroads. None of that fits Rader. But he also wrote about serving in the air force, which Rader - and Joseph Otero - had in common.

The police spun out the communications, even, it is believed, placing ads of their own in the Eagle to swap messages with him. They knew BTK's lust for publicity was his weakness. It was their way of getting to him.

It was when Dennis Rader walked into the office of his pastor, Mike Clark, at the Christ Lutheran Church that police believe he may have made his mistake. Rader told Clark he had the agenda of a church council meeting and needed to run off copies on a printer. The pastor inserted the disc into a computer. Allegedly that same disc was later sent by BTK to a local TV station. Forensics experts scoured it for clues and the data, which BTK thought had been erased, were apparently traced back to Christ Lutheran and Rader.

Modern technology was catching up with an ageing BTK. Before Rader was arrested, investigators had already obtained a DNA sample from his family. Though BTK did not sexually assault his victims, he masturbated as they died. That evidence had been preserved. It seems BTK had become careless too. He sent police a grid of numbers and letters. Among the many combinations police claimed they found was the group 'D Rader' and the number '6220'. Rader lives at 6220 Independence Road.

The police believe he is their man. Though they have warned against pre-judging a case, the press conference announcing the arrest was made in front of the mayor, a local senator and relatives of the victims. It was punctuated by standing ovations. Police Chief Norman Williams summed it up: 'Bottom line: BTK is arrested,' he said before adding a typical MidWesternism: 'Doggone it, we did it.'

But who is Dennis Rader? He does not fit the usual image of a serial killer as a dysfunctional loner. Rader is college-educated, always held steady work and is married with two children. He is a family man active in church and who helped out with the Scouts. He is the epitome of middle-class success. Many describe him as cheerful and kind. He recently brought spaghetti and salad to a church social.

It seemed a blameless life. But in retrospect it has its shadows. Rader's job was a city codes supervisor, essentially someone who takes care of strays and makes sure local bylaws, such as keeping yards clean, were obeyed. It gave him the right of access to many people's properties. Smith remembers catching him regularly in her backyard. 'It really used to bother my mom who lives with me. She just thought he was a creep,' she said.

There are other signs too. From 1974 to 1989 Rader worked at ADT Security Systems which fits home alarms and locks. It also allowed him into people's houses and made him an expert on the systems he helped fit.

Rader's family is still in shock. They too do not fit the usual profile. Rader was close to his mother, and his father, though strict, was also a loving man. Standing on the steps of Rader's mother's house, Jeff Rader told a group of reporters of his love for his elder brother. 'My mother still can't believe it. She's still very much in denial and so am I. But maybe with me acceptance is starting to creep in,' he said.

Amid the media turmoil since Rader's arrest have come heartrending cries from the relatives. None more so than Steven Relford, who watched through a keyhole as his mother, Shirley Vian, was murdered when he was just five. Now a homeless drunk, he was tracked down to Nevada by CNN and a local TV station who brought him back to Wichita. They filmed him touring his old home and showed him Rader's picture. 'That's BTK's face. There is no if,' he told them. 'That's the guy who killed my mother.' Whether this testimony will stand up in court is yet to be seen.

Cold case files in Wichita and neighbouring counties are being studied to see if BTK can be linked to other deaths. If any of them occurred after 1994, when Kansas brought back the death penalty, prosecutors can push for an execution.

If Rader is guilty, then BTK was no stereotyped villain. Instead he was a loving family man. He worked hard, brought up two good kids and looked after his mom. And he killed people in his spare time. If they again have the wrong man - the monster of suburbia is still on the loose.